SEPTEMBER 17, 1993 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 21

ENTERTAINMENT

Screwball comedy crosses Chinese and gay identities

The Wedding Banquet Cedar Lee Theater

Reviewed by Charlton Harper

What price do we pay for identity, and how far do we have to go to preserve it? Director Ang Lee explores these questions in his film, The Wedding Banquet, a crosscultural romp with no easy answers. It's the establishment of identity and a re-definition of family that are the silken, subtle supports of the entire movie. Said Ang Lee in a recent telephone conversation, "I want to show that there is no easy way out, no shortcuts. You have to pay. You can't cheat or deny your identity." Dressed in a light, 30's-style screwball comedy, the questions are not threatening so much as gently persistent.

Wai Tung (Winston Chao) is a typical American man. He's happy, a successful businessman, married to his college boyfriend, Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein), and his parents don't know. His life in New York conveniently separates him from his past and his family, who are firmly planted in Taiwan. His mother (Ah-Leh Gua) regularly implores him to wed and have grandchildren. Simon suggests that Wai can end this craziness and make his parents happy by marrying his tenant Wei Wei (May Chin), an artist who needs a green card to avoid deportation back to mainland China. But the plot backfires with the unexpected arrival of Wai's parents.

Many issues weave throughout the film. Wai's inability to confront his parents with the truth about his relationship with Simon is a crisis familiar enough to gay audiences. Wai's father Mr. Gao (Shihung Lung), longs for a grandson who will carry on his line,

crucial for a man whose family was wiped out during the Cultural Revolution and now must depend on an Americanized son to continue the family. Wei Wei struggles to exert her identity as more than a subservient Chinese woman; career and family are her inheritance as an American woman. Almost imperceptible to the Western eye is the unsettled relationship between Taiwan and its severed link to mainland history. Age and youth collide as the horrified parents witness the plain civil ceremony and discover there will be no traditional wedding banquet, unthinkable for the son of an honored general. The film culminates in the dreaded wedding banquet, a hilarious, traditional drunken rout that seems as American as Chinese.

ALBERT HUANG

Husband, husband and wife: Happy gay couple Simon and Wai-Tung learn about identity when Wai-Tung weds Wei-Wei in a green-card marriage.

All performances by the central characters are fine. Shihung Lung is especially moving as the stoic autocrat who is really a surprisingly informed and accepting father. May Chin provides much of the film's humor, yet she's bold, sexy and, finally, wise. Most refreshing is the mainstream approach and the lack of "typical" gay issues. There is only one mention of AIDS and Wai and Simon seem happily well-adjusted and without need of a therapist's couch.

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"The script was written before AIDS," Lee says when asked about the omission. "We mention safe sex to acknowledge its presence. I wanted to show the two men happy, normal. It helps the audience accept them."

But the film's job is to explore other issues of equal validity, the very problems that force us to recognize who we are and who we affect in establishing identity. "It's about flexibility," Lee says. "Things bend,

MIUIN DINIAIN

but they don't break. Chinese believe in relative truth not absolute. Nothing is absolute. What is best is what is best for everyone."

Gay films have come a long way in from the periphery. The current enlightened air that provides the mass marketing of a film like The Wedding Banquet is the same accepting attitude that presents Simon and Wai as gay, not gay. It's a hopeful sign to feast upon.

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